Polls in Microsoft Teams meetings will soon support open-ended questions

Microsoft Teams is launching a new “word cloud” feature that will help to improve the built-in Polls feature in meetings. This feature is slated to begin rolling out to both desktop and mobile users in late September.

The Microsoft Teams desktop app introduced a new polls experience for meetings back in November last year, and this feature is also available on mobile. It allows presenters to collect instant feedback from attendees’ by creating multiple-choice polls and quizzes. The company is now planning to improve the polling option in Microsoft Teams to boost meeting engagement. This upcoming update will add a new option called “word cloud polls,” allowing presenters to set up an open-ended question for collecting participants’ opinions on a specific topic.

Just like the multiple-choice polling experience, Microsoft Teams will collect all responses anonymously, and it will not be possible for other users to find out who submitted a particular word.

In addition to this feature, Microsoft Teams is also planning to add a 2×2 gallery view for meetings viewed in the Safari browser. The 2×2 gallery view is already available for Edge or Chrome users, and it can show up to four participant videos during a Teams meeting. This feature is currently under development and will roll out in mid-September.